I'm on day 3 and I'm feeling pretty good. I've been fasting 16-17 hours and eating in the 7-8 hour block. Just wondering what's the best way to include cycling activities. I'm wondering if they should be shorter sessions at mild intensity with a low calorie burn, or should they be super short HIIT type sessions. My other worries is if I cycle in the morning too hard, then I wont be able to last the 16 hour fasting phase without going into major hunger pangs.

Bugs

Last edited by BugsBunny on Wed Jun 13, 2018 3:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I did for a year or so. To put it delicately, it was not ideal. I was doing 16hrs fasted per day and eating <50g carbs.

If you want to ride for the purposes of burning calories then ride long and slow. There is no way to ride fast after you have depleted your glycogen properly and in the initial weeks your body will struggle to deal with the change and you are likely to hunger flat in new, interesting and ultimately horrible ways. Once you have the metabolic flexibility and the pacing down pat you should be able to do easy multi-hour rides without food and without impacting on your fasts.

Intensity is simply not possible. I tried to ride a season of track racing while on keto and I would finish one race and then be practically unable to pedal in the next one. My power numbers were disgraceful. I "doped" with Hammer and gummi bears for 1 meet and added like 20% to my power numbers and had repeatability...

Over the long term I developed a massive dependency on caffeine just to get through the day, horrible anxiety and a borderline binge eating disorder (that still rears its head from time to time when I'm stressed). My already low metabolism plummeted, my t3 and t4 numbers were not good, nor was my cholesterol. My FTP circled the drain.

I have to ask: why are you doing this? I tried really hard to make it work for cycling and it provided basically no benefits but many downsides. The only 2 positives I took away from the experience were that learnt I don't need to eat as much for breakfast as I thought I did and it exposed me to a bunch of new meals and styles of cooking that I may not have otherwise adopted.

Conversely, if you're looking for something that does actually work for the purposes of weight loss, superior recovery, more power and speed then ditch the animal products as best you can and look no further than wholefood plant based. A properly designed WFPB diet is the only diet I've found that allows me to maintain a healthy weight, 12-15hr training week and a threshold around 400W.

BugsBunny wrote:I'm on day 3 and I'm feeling pretty good. I've been fasting 16-17 hours and eating in the 7-8 hour block. Just wondering what's the best way to include cycling activities. I'm wondering if they should be shorter sessions at mild intensity with a low calorie burn, or should they be super short HIIT type sessions. My other worries is if I cycle in the morning too hard, then I wont be able to last the 16 hour fasting phase without going into major hunger pangs.

Bugs

Listen to the above. I haven't ever done fasting, but I just try to eat well - stay away from rubbish food and ride more. Just gradually the kilos go away. Not very quickly, but enough to make a difference and without the risks of raiding the fridge or binge eating chocolates (which I've been guilty of doing - as I just love chocolate).

I did 1 day of fasting a week (2/5 type of thing)... hit me pretty hard.

I'd skip dinner on sunday & then dinner on monday was teh next meal.1-1.5hrs gym monday morn - that was OK1hr bike ride to work - struggleevery ride that week was then painful & slow... took me out for days... but that was 1.5hrs of gym & 2hrs of cycling on stores :/

Whats your goal?HIIE/T is really showing up well for many benefits, as does intermittent fasting.

HIIE - look for a meta analysis & research by Boudou. Looking for reduction of visceral fat vs subcutaneous.There was also a recently publication around impact of HIIE at a cellular level, causing cells to effectively reverse aging.

Fasting didnt suit me too much, 2-5hrs of exercise a day - just couldnt fit it in.But i felt awesome when i did fast, so alert & aware through the day. Will get back onto it with my new schedule.

I'm not really a diet or fasting type, but have basically been fasting my whole life (I skip brekky and stopped eating late dinners).

For recreational or commuting I can ride on empty stomach for about an hour before I start bonking. Sometimes I can do 1.5 hr mountain bike loops but noticeably lower on power for some of the harder technical climbs. On a road bike it's worse, just a general lingering tiredness. For training stuff I make sure to fuel up beforehand. It doesn't really affect the performance at short intervals (unless repeated for longer durations over half an hour) but afterwards the body feels like a wreck and headaches are not uncommon.

I've tried to eat a very balanced diet - following the commonly held diet / nutrition models of: meat and non-proteins, fruit/veg, moderate carbs etc. Cutting out snacks etc etc. I've been doing this for many years. But nothing rids the belly roll.

What got me thinking about IF/keto is when I started training/rides in the morning on an empty stomach. I was always led to believe that you should have a meal with some carbs so you have sufficient energy. But strangely, I could ride equally as long and if not longer without getting hungry when I rode fasted. This just led me to think that the body somehow adapts to a different energy source - ie. fats to source energy.

Frankly the 16-17 hour fasts have been much easier than I expected (and no BS), there is already an obvious reduction on the waistline

BugsBunny wrote:I've tried to eat a very balanced diet - following the commonly held diet / nutrition models of: meat and non-proteins, fruit/veg, moderate carbs etc. Cutting out snacks etc etc. I've been doing this for many years. But nothing rids the belly roll.

Have you tried excluding animal products entirely? I had similarly tried everything: calorie counting -> lots of fruit and lots of exercise -> keto -> intermittent fasting -> paleo -> paleo + complex carbs -> no dairy -> pescatarian -> vegetarian... some of them made a small dent but none "worked". WFPB is the only thing that actually worked for me.

Thanks March. No I haven't tried an animal free diet. And I'm not against it at all. Both my parents have been strict vegetarian for over 20 years. But strangely, my dad is lean and trim, and my mum is obese. Granted my dad still works a physical job (70+ years old) and my mum doesn't exercise much at all.

I've done the 2/5 intermittent fasting, and found its a good thing to adopt, bloody hard though if you are incorporating hard exercise. I've since moved on to time limited eating, where all food is eaten in a 9-13 hour window. There's some solid science behind it, and its very easy to adopt into normal life, ive found it so much easier to live with and ride etc. Dropped 10Kg, and its staying off, and feeling hell healthier

jaythefordman wrote:I've done the 2/5 intermittent fasting, and found its a good thing to adopt, bloody hard though if you are incorporating hard exercise. I've since moved on to time limited eating, where all food is eaten in a 9-13 hour window. There's some solid science behind it, and its very easy to adopt into normal life, ive found it so much easier to live with and ride etc. Dropped 10Kg, and its staying off, and feeling hell healthier

Time limited fasting is what I'm trying out now. I'm doing the 16 hour fast, then 8 hour window of eating. I would think the 2/5 fasting would be much much harder to do. I've been able to hit 17 hours of fasting without much trouble, but a full 24 hours I reckon would drive me over the edge of starvation!

I do the 5 - 2 thing (well, Most of the time, not when I am travelling for work)

I am not sold on the benefits of the fasting as such but it does restrict my total calorie intake and force at least two alcohol free days per week. While on this diet I did initially drop from 105 to 95 kg (still overweight, just this side of obese for 182 cm tall)

When I first started, I was riding to/from work, approx. 23 km each way, 3 or 4 times a week. Most of this was off road (Fernleigh track) so speed/time differences are not overly effected by traffic or other factors, just how hard I pedaled.

I am a bit of a stats geek, and kept times for both the overall ride to work and the 4.1 km incline segment (Redhead to Whitebridge) along with if the ride was a fasting day, the day after a fasting day, or another day.

There was NO statistical correlation between my times and my eating pattern. My average time for the ride was around 46 minutes, with a standard deviation of less than 2 minutes. When I filtered by fasting, day after etc the differences was in seconds.

One thing I did notice, when riding home at 5:30 - 6:00 pm after having very little to eat all day, was the cooking smells, god those sausage and onions smelled good. Not to mention the ride to work without eating when I could smell the bakery, especially before Easter when they were churning out hot cross buns - mmmmmm

I am not specifically on Keto but it may look pretty much like it. Some years ago I experienced a very profound change in my digestion and could not process much at all. Medicos were no help really but I basically self administered an elimination diet to discover what I could and couldn't process and did a lot of research on line as what the doctors said didn't match what I actually experienced. Basically I ended up on a very low starch (it isn't as simple as FODMAPS), high protein and fats diet. So while it may look like Keto, it was derived through trial and error for what worked for me, not any fad diet theory. I do include fasting as determined by my body, not a calendar. One of principles now is only eat when actually hungry. This may be 0 - 2 meals on any one day and at whatever time my body is ready for food, browsing or snacking doesn't work for me. As I have no grain based foods at all, my sugar intake is vastly reduced so I don't feel a need to stint on this with coffee etc. I do have some chocolate (coco butter) just for extra energy. I started doing that during the worst time to get through fainting spells but I have vastly improved over the last few years and probably don't need it now. I took up cycling because, looking back I can see my periods of best health are also the periods of greatest physical fitness. So basically I cycle for health. I do not race except one sportive per year to provide a training goal. In the last one I did, I got 5th out of 49 for my age range (60-65). My perspective on fat burning is the body adapts to become more efficient at it over time. It may not provide the peak output associated with carb diets but is certainly provides the endurance. If you are preparing for an event, the bulk of energy for that comes from stored glycogen. I don't think it matters whether that comes from carbs or from fat, just so long as your tank is full on race day. The problem is that if you are dieting to lose weight, you will not be storing much glycogen and will be prone to energy deficit and so fail to perform well. In this case, a carb fix will definitely give an blood sugar energy boost. Also, if you have lost body mass, you will have less capacity to store glycogen so less energy available. In compensation, you will have less weight so will need less energy to attain the same performance. When you diet to lose fat, it is important to exercise to retain muscle mass, otherwise you will lose both muscle and fat equally, leading to an emaciated state of neither power nor capacity (mass) to store energy (glycogen).

In preparation for an event, you must eat well to fuel conversion to glycogen, you must taper off exercise to avoid burning off the glycogen so you will have an excess to store in your tissues. In other word, this is how you fill your fuel tank. You can get a little extra ready for race day from what is in your gut but this is far less than glycogen stored in tissues. There is no doubt that carbs are converted to blood sugar much more easily and with less load on the body than protein and fat. So, it's up to you to decide if it's OK to break the Keto diet for that one day and maybe have some oats for breakfast and a banana about 30 min before the start.

I am just a regular person trying to work it out for myself.It is very likely I am mistaken on some of this.

Thanks Ken. Your experience and insights are really interesting. I'm started to get an idea of what you're experiencing.

I've now completed my 10 day trial run of IF and keto. I averaged 17.0 hours of fasting per day over the 10 days, deviation of about 45 min. I weighed myself every day at the same time/scale, ~6:30pm before dinner, and made sure I drank 2 litres of water during the day. I started at 64.1kg and at day 10 I was 62.0kg. The trend line was constantly going down, except after Saturday at the pub watching, the Australia vs France world cup match! I didn't do any major exercises, except on day 4 where I rode 45 min on the trainer. The belt notch has gone down one hole in this time.

Strangely, the fasting period gets easier and easier and I don't feel any bad side effects. On day 5 I felt a bit groggy and dizzy (possibly the symptoms of what's called keto flu). But day 6 all that went away. I'm not lethargic, or lacking concentration, like "hitting the wall". My kept diet I'm still improving on and I would say I'm following it not quite to the letter but close. I've cut direct carbs down to a minimum, on some days, none. All sugary things are on most days eliminated.

I know this may sound like a get rich quick scheme, but the following video is 36 min that explains the whole thing beautifully well. I bought his book and finished reading it over the weekend. It now makes perfect sense. As its working well for me, I'm now gonna continue this same method for another 20 days. Which should then give me a full 30 day test period.

FWIW, most of the weight you have lost is water weight. You have depleted your muscle and liver glycogen stores from a few hundred grams down to very little because you're not eating enough carbohydrates to replenish them and they are stored with water at a ratio of about 4:1. You've also changed your electrolyte balance so you're retaining less water. When you restore carbs to your diet most of this weight will return. After about 2 weeks of the diet that's when you actually start losing real weight.

Factor this water fluctuation into your plans - when you hit your target weight you need to go a few kilos below it.

march83 wrote:FWIW, most of the weight you have lost is water weight. You have depleted your muscle and liver glycogen stores from a few hundred grams down to very little because you're not eating enough carbohydrates to replenish them and they are stored with water at a ratio of about 4:1. You've also changed your electrolyte balance so you're retaining less water. When you restore carbs to your diet most of this weight will return. After about 2 weeks of the diet that's when you actually start losing real weight.

Factor this water fluctuation into your plans - when you hit your target weight you need to go a few kilos below it.

Smart man this one.Weight is lost through BREATHING... yes. Pretty sure it was some Aussie people in the last 6 months that discovered this. So anything faster will be other stuff.

in terms of the 2/5 intermittent fasting - there's a book by Michael Mosely - i HIGHLY recommend you read it, it was incredibly. There's also a doco/series he did on it. VERY worth teh search.Here's the website: https://thefastdiet.co.uk/

Nate wrote:...in terms of the 2/5 intermittent fasting - there's a book by Michael Mosely - i HIGHLY recommend you read it, it was incredibly. There's also a doco/series he did on it. VERY worth teh search.Here's the website: https://thefastdiet.co.uk/

Hey mate I have played with both and have experiences similar to most of those above in one form or anther although I do like a bit fasting for weight control and a few other benefits.

Where I found keto worked best in the short term was when I was doing mostly strength based workouts with shorter intense conditioning bouts such as kettelbell snatches, swings or complexes but I don't think that style of eating is sustainable.

Interestingly if you look around the web at some of the long term keto gurus (not 20 somethings doing 6 hours of crossfit a week) you will notice a disturbing trend of them becoming over weight and a little unhealthy looking. Sure you can training your body to switch its energy creation from its natural choice of crabs/sugars to fats but there really is not a need to. Keto is best suited to where it came from for certain medical conditions under supervision.

Late last year I stumbled on to a group of outcasts from current day diet trends - high carb low fat kind of like the 80's but not the 25% to 30% "low" fat but rather 10 - 15% low fat and majority of calories coming from carbs which I have found very sustainable and also successful for me both from a weight point of view and also energy wise. Definitely worth a google if you are interested there a few people out there but I am following some of the material from Rusty Moore (also on the HFLC Facebook group).

In the end though to drop the belly fat as much as some out there say it don't matter the "calorie is king" - to loose some weight eat less than you burn. If are keen a fasting I have found a good approach rather the intermittent eating/fasting such as 16/8 is to take the Brad Pilion approach of "eat-stop-eat" and do one or two 24 hour plus fasts a week. This still allows for your training to be well fueled but is a great way of restricting calories to get into a deficit.

So many options with so much information or or disinformation put out by food companies just keep hunting, experimenting and playing around till you find what works for you.

On a side note: I exercise in the mornings without eating, fasted I suppose, where my body burns off the stored energy I only eat if I am going over say an hour and half but tend to avoid processed "energy foods" and eat during exercise not before. I also do all my strength work in the morning before eating.

steve-waters wrote:On a side note: I exercise in the mornings without eating, fasted I suppose, where my body burns off the stored energy I only eat if I am going over say an hour and half but tend to avoid processed "energy foods" and eat during exercise not before. I also do all my strength work in the morning before eating.

Ditto. I’ve lost about 1.5 kilo a month for the last 3-4 months doing this. I now do typically around 50-75km (2-3 hours) 2-4 times a week without food - just water, and haven’t really changed my diet much - only really cut down on soft drinks. Many people have commented on how much weight I have lost. I think it’s a fairly tried and proven method that’s been recommended at least since the 90’s when i was doing a lot of cycling and other sports.

Re: Water weight. Yeah - I fully get that. The interesting comment (from March) was how its retained more when taking carbs. I've already noticed that where I've had a few days with family where I ate a fair portion of carbs the belly bloat/weight seems to come back very fast. I'm still ahead at least on gross weight.

Is it only soft drinks that you have cut - although they alone would be a sugar and calorie bomb?

Keep it up man simple and what you will stick to is best as with all things.

Until around March I was mostly walking about an hour 3 or 4 times a week. I pulled the MTB out late Feb/Early March and started with a 16km ride along the local PSP increasing a few km each time I went out 2 or 3 times a week until I did a 50km group ride with a local club. after that ride I felt like I was going to die Bought a road bike after that and now doing 50km a couple of morninngs a week weather permitting and a 70-75km ride on the weekends, with one or two centuries thrown in for good measure along the way. Joining a club has been a huge motivator in pushing myself to ride further and faster. Strava has been good for that too.

Yes, it’s pretty much only soft drinks that I have cut down on. I was drinking one or two cans a day. Now maybe two or three a week and drinking more water instead, so I have no doubt that has played a large part also.

Re: Water weight. Yeah - I fully get that. The interesting comment (from March) was how its retained more when taking carbs. I've already noticed that where I've had a few days with family where I ate a fair portion of carbs the belly bloat/weight seems to come back very fast. I'm still ahead at least on gross weight.

Bugs

Keen to see how you progress Bugs. I have a colleague that has been doing the fasting thing for several months now, and seems to be having some success. Mind you I don’t know how much high intensity exercise he does, as he commutes only a few km to work.

The following is my weightloss/fitness journey over the past 18 months, sorry about the wall of text I'll leave some TLDR bullet points at the end.

I started 2017 at 140kg/175cm and obviously completely out of shape. Without realizing it I naturally fell into a very restricted calorie keto diet of basically just eating lean meats and salads. Unfortunately I still had no idea on what keto was our what a keto diet should be so I would occasionally eat things like oats or protein bars with added sugar alcohols etc. I also bought an excercise bike and started walking/hiking/running every day. After about 4 months (and 30kg lighter) my friend linked me to a few keto articles and since I was basically already following the diet I stuck with it.

In October (down to 85kg) I went on a trip to Hawaii and while there hired and rode a real bike for the first time since I was a kid. I fell in love instantly and when I got back home I bought a 2018 trek hard tail and started riding like mad. I ended 2017 at 80kg and for the first time in a year allowed my self to eat all the crap food I had abstained from. I noticed my energy and power on the bike were massively increased and after a few weeks I was adding a ton of muscle and improving on my strava records week by week. Unfortunately I was also putting on a ton of fat weight and by the end of feb thanks to an injury that stopped me riding for a few weeks I had ballooned back to 95kg.

Since then I've been keto dieting again (down to 83kg) though this time much more informed and much less aggressively and also with targeted carbs before interval workouts. This really is the best of both worlds. You get the ability to do endless zone1/2 rides because of your fat adaption from being keto, but you also get the top end power for your interval work (or racing if thats your thing).

Things I have learned from keto dieting/cycling 1. Great for weight loss and appetite control2. Fat adaption allows you to ride fasted in zone1/2 basically forever as long as you have water/electrolytes3. Make sure you're getting your electrolytes. You lose a ton because water retention is so poor on low carb and excercising obviously makes this even worse.4. When starting out cycling on the diet I recommend going for a few easy fasted rides to get accustomed to the feel of riding with out carbs and bring some fast acting carbs with you just incase you over do it and bonk. Slowly build up the duration and intensity over a few workouts, then after 2-3 weeks start in with the intervals and see how you go. Some people can manage without the targeted carbs but I couldn't which brings me to my next point...5. Being glycogen depleted is really rough especially when you're trying to do intervals or sprints. I personally don't want to give up 20% or more of my FTP so I eat about 40g of easily digested carbs like gels 20-30 minutes before I start a workout and then another 40g gel every hour after that.6. Overall Keto isn't that great of a diet for cycling, the lack of carbs is really killer, but I have real trouble with appetite control on a normal western diet when trying to lose weight.

I'm interested in this topic. I've been dabbling with keto for a little while. I think it's a good diet. The downsides I can see are.

- If you are keto it's really difficult and it's not a diet you can cheat on. Have that icecream or a couple of beers and you're out. In two days time you can look forward to the headaches and brain fuzz again. That's not fun. - Athletic performance at the top end seems to be bad bad bad for me. Up to zone 4 it's fine. Perhaps if I did keto super well and long term it would be better. Don't know.

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